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About

In his bestselling book Visualize This, Nathan Yau introduced you to the tools and programming techniques for visualization. Now, in Data Points, he explores the thinking process that helps you create original, meaningful visualization. Start with the data and build.

Visualization is often approached within a rigid framework of design rules and principles. We tend to think of it as charts that have been optimized for graphical perception and anything that sits outside the framework must not work. This notion is outdated.

Visualization has developed into a medium that is used for analysis, presentation, and storytelling (of all sorts), which requires a more flexible approach to data.

In Data Points, you start with the data — what it is and what it represents. This makes for visualization that is more meaningful and useful to a wide audience because you understand the data better. The more you know about the data, the better you can explain and present it to others.